


Gimme a sign, Sam

by whichstiel



Series: Season 12 Codas [18]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Season/Series 12, Signing, The British Invasion, Vampires, eileen is a bad ass, episode coda, sam has a name sign, spn 12x17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 04:07:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10586109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichstiel/pseuds/whichstiel
Summary: “How many vampires?” Sam asks, striking two fingers against his throat.“Should have been four. Turned out to be five.” She held up a hand to forestall his next question. “All dead. The nest is clear.”“And you?”“I’m fine, Sam.”





	

Eileen’s machete drips with blood. Her heart feels like it’s about to tear out of her chest and she wheezes with the toll of taking out the entire vampire nest in the space of about a half an hour. Absently, she swipes at her forehead and her hand comes away in a mix of blood and sweat. She feels at her forehead, then checks the rest of her body before sagging in relief. A few scrapes. Definitely bruises. But nothing too serious. In her early hunting days she occasionally resurfaced from her post-hunt haze bleeding like a stuck pig. She’s learned to check right away before dizziness from blood loss sets in. She looks around the farmhouse living room, bland white blinds shut tight to the light except for one hanging drunkenly by one side, damaged in the fight. The house is dark and smells like blood and unwashed bodies. From a ceramic bathtub squatting in the basement wafts the early decay of the victim that alerted her to their nest. Eileen shudders. _Ugh_. Vampires are the worst. 

And then there’s a blur at the edge of her vision, a quick dark streak against the darker shadowed hallway. 

_Shit._

She’d been stalking this den for the past week, counting vampires passing in and out, and going over the building plans from city zoning until she could close her eyes and still find her way around the house. She’d counted four vampires, damn it. Either the hall shadow was a shut-in she never saw or it was a captive victim slipping quietly between rooms. She jerks the machete up and advances on the hallway. 

The hall leads to three bedrooms, one hallway closet, and a tiny bathroom with a half window. Eileen moves quickly, kicking open the closet. Empty, save for a half heartedly folded stack of dusty linens. The bathroom is empty as well, along with the first two bedrooms. Monster or victim, odds are that the shadowy figure she stalks is in stealth mode, and still inside the house.

The vampire rushes her as soon as she kicks open the last bedroom door and she half stumbles, half slides back, the monster following her into the hallway. She bares her teeth and the vampire hisses at her, lunging for the machete in her hand. Eileen sweeps her leg up in a wide kick, hitting him squarely in the forearm and knocking his hand into the wall. She buries her other hand into his t-shirt and drags him viciously down, using her body weight to force him to his knees. She brings the machete down swiftly, slicing diagonally through the air. His head rolls across the floor and comes to rest against the chipped baseboard, face turned away. Absently she rubs blood spatter from her chin and then spits onto the floor, blanching at the taste of blood from her reopened split lip. 

Eileen, vibrating with tension, does one more check of the house. When she finds no more vampires she seeks the momentary respite of her car, opens the rear door, and slumps down onto the seat. She digs a water bottle and granola bar from her food stash behind the driver’s seat and closes her eyes briefly, reveling in the taste of food and the smell of fresh air. Her phone vibrates in her back pocket and she reaches to pull it out. She grins around the granola and slides her thumb across the screen to reply.

> **Sam:** Checking in?
> 
> **Eileen:** I’m fine. Nobody’s on my tail.
> 
> **Eileen:** Just took out a vamp nest. 

She watches the message indicator on the phone as it flickers in and out of existence, as though Sam was typing and retyping something. He likely is. Sam always seems to be dancing carefully around her, afraid to overstep. 

Her phone rings and she answers it with a grin, his video call springing to life in her palm. “You worried?”

“How many vampires?” Sam asks, striking two fingers against his throat. 

“Should have been four. Turned out to be five.” She holds up a hand to forestall his next question. “All dead. The nest is clear.”

“And you?”

“I’m fine, Sam.” Her fingers hook into the altered sign for dog they had worked on and the gesture ends on a closed fist - the letter S. Video chat quality, especially out here in farm country, is terrible but Eileen is pretty sure she catches a blush as she make the sign for Sam. Just a few weeks ago Sam had sat up with her all night as Eileen shook from the aftermath of shooting Renny. She'd ended up teaching him all the vulgar signs she knew, watching him guffaw as he tried to master them. That oddly juvenile distraction had been both unexpected and astoundingly beneficial. Oh, if she could only sit here forever, phone balanced on her knees, his beautiful brown eyes smiling up at her. 

“You should be staying out of sight.”

Eileen rolls her eyes - just a little. “They think I’m in Ireland, Sam. Not Alabama.”

“That’s what they think we think they think. Just because we think Mick bugged the bunker doesn’t mean the Men of Letters hasn’t figured out you’re not overseas. If they catch wind of your hunt...”

“I’ll be long gone before the sun hits the horizon.” She gazes fondly at him and affection and longing seem to swallow her whole for a moment. “I’m fine. What’s the news your way?”

Sam fills her in on the latest bunker drama, the newest Men of Letters intel, what he ate for dinner last night. She clings to it all. They finally hang up and she strokes her phone for a moment, lost in thought. She’s been a solitary hunter for so long. It feels both odd and thrilling to contemplate an end to her lonely lifestyle. Hunting alone was never a problem until suddenly, it is. She clutches her phone and thinks of Sam.

Eileen burns the bloodied house down. She’s too tired to bury the bodies and, anyway, she didn’t feel like carrying a bloated corpse from the basement. That night she sleeps curled in the back seat of her car as it sits tucked just out of sight on a twisty old fire road. Her phone lights up. 

> **Sam:** Good night.

A video alert pops up and when it finally loads she sees Sam, a poorly lit backdrop of books behind him. He smiles, hunched over the table to make sure he's in frame. In the video he signs 'good night' as well. “Good night, Sam,” she types before tucking the phone close to her body once more, a glow of something like happiness quaking like a pulsar at her core.

**Author's Note:**

> What a weekend. Better late than never, little coda!
> 
> Thanks for reading! I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/whichstiel) and [Tumblr](http://whichstiel.tumblr.com/) @ whichstiel. You may also like the Supernatural recap and gif blog I co-write/curate, [Shirtless Sammy](https://shirtlesssammy.tumblr.com/).


End file.
